Eva Ackermann - December 6, 1982

Fate of Parents III

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By the Russians.

Was it the fifteenth of January?

Yes.

The 14th, he went out from the house with other people to get food. Somewhere they cooked food for the whole community and they went out with uh, probably pass or something. He went out with other people and from what--and he never came back. There was a raid uh, tell me?

Air raid...

Air raid, there was an air raid and my father, he stopped somewhere to uh, to make uh, cigarette. Somehow a shrapnel hit his uh, leg or some part of his body. They took him to a Revier, I don't know. They took him uh, to uh, whatever hospital emergency was there. The war was over the next day. I mean, she waited all night. The war was over the next day and uh, she went in there to see my father. They said that he got hit by a shrapnel. She went in there and his name was listed that he uh, died in uh, uh, from a broken leg. Obviously bled, bled to death and she never found uh, when they showed h...when they showed her the people that were there, that were uh, that just died, she just couldn't find him. I mean to this day, you know, I can't cry now. And that kills me this minute, because it's uh, I feel much better when I cry and I cry a great deal, but it's like I don't feel like--and I feel very light-headed now. But the only thing is about my father's death, I was very close to him, that somehow he died uh, knowing that I was alive, not that it made any--I mean it probably made a little difference to him that, not dying--maybe he didn't know he was but uh, that he thought that I was alive and--can we stop it a little?